Trying to rekindle my love of art

When I used to post here I didn't really know what I wanted to do with myself. I was drawing for fun but didn't see it as a career path. Now I'm in my mid 20s and working as a marketing manager and find myself continually working with designers even just for little tweaks here and there. Its frustrating and I'm committed to learning!

I want to rediscover my love for art and see if in doing so it helps me in my career as well (but mainly just for the love and fun of it)!

I was wondering if anyone has any tips to get me started again - I used to focus on anime and cartoon type drawings and think I'll venture there again but want to make them a bit more conceptual (a bit like RichardDoble who posts here).

I want to learn how to use Photoshop, InDesign and Sketchup and get back to basics with greyscale pencils - any encouraging words of advice, support or directions on the forum to some really useful threads would be really appreciated!

There's a lot to read, see and update myself on so I'll get browsing and hopefully you lovely people will get me moving in the right direction.

Stay away from the cartoons and anime, they won't get you anywhere as far as learning and progressing. Focus more on "realism". Once you master things like value, form, anatomy, etc, you will be able to develop your own style. Focus is good, but don't let it narrow what you like to do. Still draw cartoons and anime, but if you want to get good, you need to exit your comfort zone a little at a time and don't give up. Just do it. That's how you get started, and that's how you learn. Hope I could help.

I agree with ObscureMechanism, I'd keep away from the cartoons and anime for now and concentrate on re-learning the basics from the 'ground up'. If it's any consolation, I'm doing the same after a large period of time away from the art world so you aren't alone. And it's so nice being inspired again! A mixture of things brought me back to drawing and painting, but the main thing was I had forgotten the simple pleasures in just sitting and drawing something.

With this in mind, I'd recommend a B for sketching. I find HBs a little hard for loose work, and definitely wouldn't go softer than, say, a 2B. Depends what you want to achieve though and everyone has their own ways of working! I think paper type is as important as pencil type too, so make sure you go for a nice smooth, thick paper and not a (cheap £1.99) sketchbook. I like to sketch on illustration board as it is very white and smooth, but as I said everyone has their own preference.

Hope you stick at it, it's a long road but very rewarding once you start conquering personal milestones!

Same here

Reading this post was like looking in the mirror..... I went to school for media art and animation, I graduated in 2004 and never really pursued my passion for art. I got stuck in the retail game and Im at my wits end with that. I just recently got back into drawing and painting (digitally) about 2 weeks ago, and found myself to feel more fulfilled. I just wanted to say I wish you luck and that hard work runs through your veins to reach your goal.

Everyone here gave really good advice so far.
But of course once you mastered the basics and how to draw realistically, you can bend the style and draw in whatever style you like, and you can tell when somebody has a strong grasp of realism but choose to work in a very stylized way.

And most important thing is just to draw A LOT practice, practice, etc. as they say. cliched but true!